Single of the Week
Posted on January 31, 2006
Tonight’s Single of the Week is brought to you by indie pop trio Mosquitos. They’re a bilingual group, singing in both English and Portuguese, with a bright poppy sound with a little bit of lo-fi inspiration. I love this band, and not just because of a minor infatuation with lead singer Juju Stulbach (though that does help). The song I present to you this week is the sixth track off of their Sunshine Barato album, “Love Remix” (incorrectly titled “Loove Remix” in the iTunes Music Store). The whole album is really good, perfect for either putting a shine on a good day, or bringing you up on a bad one. Check it out. As usual, gotta get yourself iTunes.
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Final Update
Posted on January 31, 2006I finally got my refund from Apple. All that and my first check from Google Adsense yesterday? Rock! I reordered my iBook battery this afternoon, and was surprised to find that it has already shipped, with an estimated arrival date of Thursday. Let’s see what happens.
Filed Under King of Internets, Meta | 4 Comments
Busy Weekend
Posted on January 28, 2006No Friday Random 5 this week, I got too much shit to do. Regular posting will resume on Monday or Tuesday.
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Yet Another Apple Refund Update
Posted on January 25, 2006I waited a week and still saw no return. So I called back. The guy told me that it had been signed for on the 9th, but the return was not initiated. There was some confusion as to why I had returned a copy of Motion 2 when I clearly had ordered a battery for my iBook. So I explained again that they had shipped the wrong item to me. The guy talked to his supervisor, and then he initiated a credit back to my card. It takes Apple 3-5 days to process a refund, and then however long it takes my bank. If I don’t see a refund in a week and a half, I’m supposed to call back and find out what’s going on. This better not happen when I order my iMac, or so help me God I’m going to switch to Linux.
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Single of the Week
Posted on January 24, 2006I’m in an old school, DB at the roller-rink sorta mood, so this week we’re going to throw down with Kool and the Gang. In particular, I think we should Get Down on It. I don’t claim to be a big Kool and the Gang fan, but the two dozen tracks in my iTunes library would say otherwise. All I’m sayin’ is keep it real, and keep it real funky.
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Doing My Part
Posted on January 22, 2006
I ordered some decals from the good lads over at White Roof Radio, because, well, they’re good lads and I don’t mind supporting the show. What’s White Roof Radio, you ask? Well WRR is a nice little podcast all about MINI Coopers, modding them, racing them, clubs and events, and interviews with various MINI personalities. I’d like to hear them get interviews with some of the BMW/MINIUSA people, or maybe even have a medium do a seance to contact the ghost of Sir Alec Issigonis. Right now their listener base is something like the population of Wyoming, and they’re growing.
The call went out to their listeners to pick up some decals, so I did, and I popped it on the Cougar. DB wants enough pictures to put together a gallery, so I snapped a shot for him and emailed it off. It may go up tonight even. Someone already beat me to submitting a picture of a decal on their face, but I’m very tempted to put one on a cat. I need a cat…
The call went out to their listeners to pick up some decals, so I did, and I popped it on the Cougar. DB wants enough pictures to put together a gallery, so I snapped a shot for him and emailed it off. It may go up tonight even. Someone already beat me to submitting a picture of a decal on their face, but I’m very tempted to put one on a cat. I need a cat…
Filed Under Automobiles, Meta, Pictures | 1 Comment
More Random Tech Junk
Posted on January 21, 2006An Apple Update | If you remember I’ve been trying to get a new battery for my laptop. I placed the order on 12/23, received the (wrong) package on the 28th, placed a request for a return, didn’t get a shipping label until 1/4, and Apple received the package on the 9th. At that point, it takes four to five days for them to process the return. It’s now the 19th and I haven’t gotten a refund credited to my account yet. I called them today to see what’s up, and they told me to wait a week and call again if I still haven’t got it. Which is what they told me last week. And what they told me when it took a week and a half to get the mailing label to send it back. If all goes well, I should get my new battery about a month and a half after I ordered it. I’ll keep you updated.
iLife ‘06 | The new application suite from Apple is out now, and I’ve got it. The improvements to iPhoto are pretty great, including the expansion of the library size (iLife ‘05 could only handle 25,000 photos, the new version can support up to 250,000) and the way the photos are arranged in Finder. And it’s zippier. iMovie I haven’t tried out yet, because I don’t work with video too much, but I’m going to give it a spin soon. (I’ve got a little project stewing.) iWeb, in a word, sucks. It’s supposed to be an easy webpage creation app. And it is easy, but if you want a blog, you’re better off with Blogger or Wordpress.com, if you want to share photos, go with Flickr. The pages do look slick, but don’t really look like webpages; they look more like print pages. Very graphics intensive. And to my knowledge, automatic syncing only works with .Mac; otherwise you have to ftp your pages to a server manually. iTunes is updated to 6.0.2, mostly a minimal dot release. So far the big changes are the Mini-store, which has had its own little brouhaha which turned out to be pretty pointless, and the fact that you can now share video over a network. Which lends new credence to the rumour that you’ll soon be able to plug Airport Express into a tv, (again, not as exciting as people make it out to be, as your tv is 640×480, most internet video is not that big and video bought through the iTMS is a fourth of that at 320×240). The biggest change is the new Garage Band, which has added a podcast recording studio, which is actually pretty sweet. Included tools are bumper music, sound effects, and radio effects, and iChat integration to record voice chat (hopefully someone will make a 3rd-party plugin to integrate Skype, which is a little more common, and cross-platform, than iChat.) Also new is a studio to score video, a baby version of Apple’s Soundtrack Pro which is now only available as a part of Final Cut Studio. I don’t have a dvd burner, so I’ve never used (nor installed) iDVD.
Wifi at Work | I’ve finally been given the go-ahead to set up a wireless network at the country club I work at. This is pretty sweet for me, because with all the stuff I’ll be doing, I prefer (and in some cases have to) do on my iBook, and I’ll need an internet connection. I picked up a Linksys router for fifty bucks at Wal-Mart, and needless to say, hooking it up has been a pain in the ass. We’ve got a big ass router that the whole club is hooked into via Cat-5 cable (actually three routers) as well as a dodgy Windows server that feeds the workstations. I can create a network with the wireless router that my iBook can connect to, however I can’t get the wireless router to connect to the big router, and therefore the internets. I can connect my iBook to the internets by plugging directly into the big router via the same cable that I was plugging the wireless router into. But the wireless router just won’t connect. DB is going to provide a little over-the-phone tech support so hopefully it’ll all work out. Another issue that is plaguing me is range; I can only get 1/3rd the coverage that I need, so hopefully I’ll be able to convince the boss to spring for another wireless router at a later date.
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Fabulous Friday Random 5
Posted on January 20, 2006No introduction needed.
- The Immortal Lee County Killers – Blues | A slow swirling ’60s-ish track from the garage blues group. Reminiscent of early psychedelia.
- Gogol Bordello – 60 Revolutions | Gogol Bordello describe themselves as “gypsy punk”. That is to say, punk sound and ethic, but with a healthy dose of accordion and flamenco rhythms. And a Hungarian lead singer to boot.
- Wyclef Jean – President | Welcome to Haiti: Creole 101 was a side album released on the downlow by Wyclef mixing a lot of Caribbean rhythms with his signature style. This track explores what the most likely repercussions if he were elected president.
- Juanes – Mala Gente | Juanes is a bit unusual for rock en español, while most groups upon hitting success start to suck, he’s maintained his signature skillful guitar playing and Colombian sound. Granted there are increasingly more common ballads on his albums, but he’s still got good rockers like this one.
- David Byrne – Tiny Apocalypse | What can be said about David Byrne other than that Grown Backwards is one of his greatest albums in years. Get it.
That’s it for this week. Good day.
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Single of the Week
Posted on January 18, 2006Alabama 3 are probably best known for “Woke Up this Morning”, the single that was used for the title credits on the HBO hit “The Sopranos”. That song came off of their “Exile on Coldharbour Lane” album (itself a reference to the Rolling Stone’s ‘Exile on Main St.’) their first album, and their best. (Their recent albums have been improving, but none have quite yet matched the fluidness of the first.) Espousing a church of love, communism, and Elvis, and claiming to have originally met in a rehab center, these guys are definitely out there. And that’s why I’m going to feature one of the songs buried in the Coldharbour Lane album, Hypo Full of Love (The 12 Step Plan).
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Adobe Lightroom Public Beta; a Review of Sorts
Posted on January 18, 2006
It was rumoured for a long while that Apple was going to come out with a pro app for photographers, a la Final Cut for videographers, Motion for animators, and * for musicians. This app was supposed to be a “Photoshop killer”. When that app finally came out, Aperture, it wasn’t what everyone expected. Instead of being primarily for manipulating photos, it’s more geared towards pro photographers who aren’t looking to edit photos but to adjust exposures, quickly look and compare photos, make spreads and contact sheets, and so forth. Shortly thereafter, Adobe released a public beta of a program called Lightroom, for free, and as of this post, Mac OSX only. A Windows version is supposed to be on the way. Many say that this program was created to quash the Apple uprising, Adobe says that they have been working on this for long before Aperture came out.
Since it’s free, and since I like both photography and Adobe products, I thought I’d check out the public beta. And since it was nice today, I decided to go out and shoot some pictures at local park Holmes Lake. After shooting 121 pictures, I brought my camera home to see how I could integrate Lightroom into my workflow. (Current workflow = 1. Import into iPhoto. 2. Drink a beer.)
Loading up Lightroom is fast, for a pro app on an older(-ish) computer. The UI is in need of a little polish, but this is a beta, so one can’t be too picky. Lightroom automatically detected my camera and pulled up the import window; some of the options for importing include whether to copy or move from the original location to Lightroom’s library, what to name the photos, and tagging for keywords, dates, locations, and other metadata. Importing was kind of slow, but that may be due the fact that my camera was plugged into an older, kinda slow USB hub, and Bit Torrent is running in the background.
Navigating pictures is very easy, with an option to select multiple pictures to compare them side by side. The screen seems crowded, but that is more due to the fact that my laptop’s screen is limited to 1024×768. When I get my 17″ iMac for my birthday, things will rock even harder. The window consists of mainly three elements: The main block wherein your photo is shown, two blocks on either side, one for photo overview and the other for settings and adjustments, and a strip at the bottom featuring all the photos in the library or current shoot. Rendering an image can sometimes take a while (>15 seconds); whether that’s because of my hardware or the app itself I do not know. After deleting a photo, you have to manually select the next picture; it says that it is loading the next image but won’t actually load until you select a different photo. Another little annoyance is that you can’t rotate a picture in loupe (single-image) mode that I know of; you have to switch to grid (all images) view to do it. There may be a menu item for it that I just overlooked though.
For the first step I just went through all the photos in loupe view, to pick out the good ones, and I eventually got used to switching between loupe and grid views to rotate and batch delete pictures. I eventually whittled it down to 27 photographs (out of the original 121). And this is just in the first step, which takes place in the Library. The next step is on to Develop mode.
In Develop mode, the window stays the same, however the two sidebars change. On the left is a series of presets to adjust the picture for sepia, grayschale, antique, and so forth. On the right are sliders for individual setting adjustments, ranging from temperature, tint, saturation, exposure, contrast, and the like. The presets are nice for quick adjustments, and the sliders make custom changes very easy.
Next is the Slideshow mode. Pretty much self-explanatory, although this works very nicely. It’s excellent for presenting, particularly to clients, and even better if you’ve got a nice big Apple Cinema Display.
The last mode is the Print mode, which I’ve not used, because my printer is out of ink. But I hear it’s pretty good too.
I think I’m going to incorporate Lightroom into my workflow from now on; it makes fixing up photos simple and fast. For examples of what I’ve done with it, you can check out the pictures from that shoot in the gallery or at my Flickr.
Mac users can grab the public beta here.
